Cock

In Cock, Mike Bartlett’s sharp, powerful script tackles the nature of personal identity. As the program notes remind us, homosexuality existed before it was given a name, but the act of naming it in the nineteenth century brought about a whole new way of defining the nature of being human. Bartlett’s play implicitly emphasises that it makes no more sense to define someone by their sexual orientation than it does to define someone by their so-called race.

This Brisbane production has been restaged to the design aesthetic Bartlett intended, performed in the round with a minimalist set and no props. Unlike the Melbourne production, reviewed here recently by Richard Watts, there are no lengthy scene changes. The action flows as effortlessly as Bartlett’s brilliantly epigrammatic dialogue.

John (Tom Conroy) is in a long term relationship with ‘M’ (Eamon Flack), but finds himself attracted to ‘F’ (Sophie Ross), and this conventional love triangle is complicated by the fact that different genders are involved. ‘M’s’ father, ‘F’ (Tony Rickards) is enlisted to assist ‘M’ to fight for John, a clever twist on the stereotypical mother-in-law response to someone hurting her baby.

Leticia Cáceres’s direction keeps the twists and turns alive with changes of pace and a clever use of the mobile white pillows that make up the floor ‘cloth’ (designer Marg Horwell). Rachel Burke’s lighting moves between close focus and wide angle, with The Sweats’ sound design (composer Pete Goodwin) enhancing the mood changes across time.This deceptively simple, stripped-bare theatre is hugely satisfying, as it requires great imagination on the part of the creators as well as the audience. The language delights and provokes, only occasionally dipping into polemic, but the actors carry those occasions with a wicked grace. Language is the weapon of choice in this private war, and the injuries are no less deep when inflicted by loved ones.